The Art of Crash Landing (21 page)

T
he sky is a mixed bag this afternoon, almost too blue to look at in spots, but there are also some scattered clouds, gray and swollen, chugging past. I step from sunlight to shade to sunlight again as I walk down the hill toward Luke's office. It's refreshing right now, but I imagine it's not much fun when a real storm hits here, adding heavy rain to this ceaseless wind.

Since I have only a half-hour lunch break, it's time to get started, so I set my phone to private caller and dial Richard Hambly's number. An old man answers, and once I verify that the voice is that of Mr. Hambly, I feed him a line of bullshit about me being from the gas company and that we need to work on his gas line. He's a good citizen so he agrees to be home this afternoon between five and seven, so I thank him and quickly hang up before he could start wondering why the gas company would have its phone set as a private caller. Now all I need is a ride.

Pushing open the door of Barber, Smith, and Franklin, I find myself momentarily disheartened. The gloom of the outer office, the sight of perky Patty sitting behind her desk exactly where she
was the last time I came in—for a second it feels like I'm starting this craptastic adventure all over again.

I head straight to Luke's office, tossing a “He's expecting me” over my shoulder.

I stop at his door and tap my knuckles on his doorjamb.

He glances up from his computer and laughs. “Look at you!”

I make a quick clothing inspection, but nothing seems to be hanging out anywhere. “What?”

“Your hair . . . it's um . . .”

“Yeah, well, it's windy in case you haven't noticed.”

“I like it.”

“Really?” I put up a hand to pat at the fluffy mess that is, to be honest, a bit more out of control than I'd realized.

He grins. “I've always been a Bon Jovi fan.”

I tell him to fuck off—in the nicest possible way, of course. He laughs, and I'm laughing, too, although I'm also trying to get my fingers through my hair to calm it down a little. I'm not overly vain, but . . . Jon Bon Jovi?

“I'm glad you stopped by,” Luke says. “I asked Patty about the keys to your grandmother's house, and you don't have anything to worry about. We had the locks changed right after your grandmother passed, so there are no keys floating around. You have one, and we have the other.”

“Uh . . . okay . . .” I'm momentarily dumbfounded. All the doors and windows were locked last night when I got home; unless perky Patty is Tawny's partner in crime—which seems highly unlikely—somehow Tawny does have a key.

“What wrong?” he asks.

I consider explaining to Luke how I know that he's wrong about the keys, but then he'd probably call Fritter and there would be a
thing
with Fritter and Tawny. And although I'd probably get all my stuff back, I might never find out what all the sneaking
around was about. Plus, the alternate scenario, the one in which I catch Tawny in the act, wrestle her to the ground, and sit on her head until she talks, is simply too tempting to relinquish.

“Nothing,” I reply.

“What is it?”

I laugh and shake my head. “Everything is fine. Trust me.” This is always bad advice coming from me, but surprisingly enough, Luke seems to take it.

“All right, then. Oh, and Patty watered the plants last week, but it's probably time to water them again.”

I nod. “It's already done.”

“Thanks,” he replies.

“It was no trouble,” I say which is absolutely true since I wasn't the one who did it. “But I do have a favor to ask.”

I pull the phone book page from my back pocket, and set it in front of Luke. He frowns at the crumpled paper on his desk and it occurs to me that tearing a page out of a phone book is probably not the sort of thing he would do. Furthermore, as he tentatively begins to unfold the page, I see that I have somehow also passed along another slip of paper that was certainly not meant for him. Now, not only does my casual phone book vandalism make me look like an asshole, I look like a crazy asshole.

“I should have written the address down instead of tearing the page out,” I admit. “Sorry.”

He nods, but his attention is on the other piece of paper. There's an awkward pause while both of us try to come up with what to say about a piece of paper upon which is written only the words
twat waffle.

“I'm trying to decide on my rapper name,” I tell him.

Luke grins up at me with an expression of bemused wonder, but he hands the slip of paper back to me without further comment.

“You mentioned needing a favor?” he says.

“I need to go someplace after work, but I still don't have a car . . .”

“Where?”

I flatten out the crumpled phone book page and point to Hambly's address. Luke deliberately picks up a pen and writes the address on a Post-it note.

“I'll pick you up at five,” he tells me.

“I'll also need a ride home after.”

“Naturally.”

“Sorry.”

“No trouble,” he replies, but I don't think either of us believes that.

He passes back the phone book page and then watches without comment while I carefully fold it up and slide it back into my pocket. I'm not sure why I bother—it's not like I can
untear
it out of the book.

“When we're finished this afternoon,” he says, “do you want to go get some dinner?”

The invitation catches me off guard. In every single interaction with this man I have come across as nothing but a big hot mess. What is he thinking?

“Sorry, I have plans for later tonight.” This is true, assuming Tawny takes the bait I so elaborately dangled before her, but I worry that my reply sounds like a blow off, so I quickly counter with, “How about tomorrow?”

He agrees and then offers to cook me dinner, which I accept. We make a few minutes of general small talk—he asks how it's going at the library. I give him the highlights without mentioning any of the really important stuff, such as Fritter's stonewalling or Tawny's burgling.

I haven't eaten since breakfast and my stomach is dangerously empty, however I'm enjoying the banter, so I ignore my mounting
queasiness and launch into the story of the Unidentified Fecal Objects. We're both laughing as I explain how, based on the size variation and the cigarette butt, I figured out that they're actually dog turds that Tawny is bringing in to torment Fritter. I don't mention the fact that I'm pretty sure the turd du jour was from my grandmother's backyard. If I did, Luke might ask why Tawny would be at the house, or ask how the Winstons were doing, and then I'd have to lie. Instead I just skim the surface of the mystery, keeping the dog shit generic and telling him that I'm going to put a stop to it, which is true enough.

When he asks if my job description includes “other related doodies,” I laugh like I'm supposed to, but my heart's not in it. I'm feeling sick enough now that I've started to sweat.

“So, I was right about Tawny,” he says.

“In what way?”

“She's too much for Fritter to handle.”

“Nah. She's not that bad. Sometimes it's just easier to act like a badass than admit you're unhappy.”

With a concerned expression, Luke reaches over to where I'm perched on the edge of his desk, and puts his hand on top of mine. He's acting as if I've said something overtly personal. Or maybe I look as terrible as I feel.

“Are you okay?” he asks gently.

“Where's your bathroom?” I reply.

B
y the time I leave Luke's office it's two thirty. The church parking lot across the street is empty, save a handful of cars and a couple of disheveled men crouched near the Dumpster. I walk across the street, keeping a careful eye on the Dumpster divers as I grow closer. I needn't have bothered. When they see me heading their way, they stand, pocketing handfuls of cigarette butts,
and they walk away. Following a few steps behind them is a gray cat—Colonel Parker, I'm guessing, since I recognize one of the men as the feral-looking Elvis I met Tuesday. As he walks past, Colonel Parker studies me with one green eye, the other matted shut with pus.

I step up to the window by the door and peer through the cloudy glass. I can see Karleen cleaning out the food service area in the far end of the room. A teenager, probably some poor community service volunteer, listlessly smears a mop across the floor, and at a table in the corner sits Father Barnes staring into a coffee cup. He looks a little hungover. I'm not surprised.

The day is bright, so the glass presents me with two scenes superimposed one on the other—a double exposure: the people inside the dining room and a reflection of me standing outside in the parking lot. Everyone in there looks like a ghost. Or maybe I'm the ghost.

I could go inside. I could pick up a rag or a mop. I could apologize to my mother's friend for not showing up when I said I would. I could be a friend to Father Barnes, a man who has been nothing but kind to me. Or I could walk away.

At this very moment, as if my thoughts were words able to penetrate glass, the teenager mopping the floor looks up and sees me through the window. I step back, but not fast enough. When her eyes meet mine, she raises a hand.

Walking back to the library, I replay the girl's gesture and parse it for meaning—arm lifted, palm out. Was it a greeting? Had she been inviting me in? Probably not. I think she was just making sure I understood that I was much, much too late.

M
onday, December eleventh dawned cold—for Florida anyway—with a hint of rain to come. I had the whole day off and my mother's appointment with her oncologist wasn't until the afternoon, so I decided to do some Christmas shopping. I can remember as I hurried through my errands wondering when my mother would be able to drive herself again. I was ready, more than ready, to get my life back.

First, I made a quick stop at the liquor store to pick up a few bottles of Maker's Mark as gifts for my hardcore party friends. Then I swung by the mall, where I burrowed through the crowds and bought a few odds and ends for my mother, a video game for my then boyfriend, and some soap and lotion baskets for the coworkers who I feared would buy me something. I was especially proud of the cigars I scored from a dark, wiry man skulking around the parking lot behind Sears. He pulled the box out of his trunk, took my twenty-dollar bill, and promised me they were genuine Cubans. The man was Cuban, I could tell that the minute he opened his mouth. The cigars? Who knows? They might have
been from Cuba. I hoped for my boss's sake that they weren't laced with anything too poisonous.

Then I went to the bookstore for the pricey, hardback edition of
The Caine Mutiny
I'd special ordered for Queeg. He'd recently admitted to me that although he'd seen the movie, he'd never actually read the novel. All those years he'd been answering to the name of a character from a book he'd never even read. The novel's Captain Queeg was even crazier than Humphrey Bogart's, and I could hardly wait to see how much reading this book would annoy my Queeg. I remember laughing as I ran out to my car, my arms clutching the book while trying to hold my jacket closed against the cold.

It was sprinkling by the time I reached my mother's house. When she got in the car, with only that fine halo of postchemo stubble on her head, I remember thinking that she needed the soft wool hat I had just bought her. But it was in the back of the jeep, jumbled up with all the other gifts; it would have been a hassle to get out and pop the hatch and dig around for it. Looking back, I wish I'd bothered. I wish I'd climbed out of the car to find that damn hat. She would have liked it; it was almost the same color green as her eyes.

At the clinic they took blood, did a couple scans, and then the doctor came in and poked around on her stomach a little. It would be a few days, he said, before all the results would be in and our next step—those were his words,
our next step
—could be discussed.

I remember thinking at the time that my mother didn't have many
next steps
left. Whatever the tests would reveal, it was pretty clear that she was finished with chemotherapy. The chemicals they'd pumped in to poison the tumor had poisoned everything else as well, giving her vicious sores in her mouth, weakening her kidneys, and even attacking her heart. Swelling it, the doctor told us, “from the size of a fist to the size of a softball.”

When he said that to her, she asked, “Mush ball or fast pitch?”

The doctor frowned, scribbled on her chart for a few seconds, and then said “I'll see you next week” as he left the room.

I lifted her clothes off the hook behind the door. She sighed and slipped the hospital gown off of her shoulders as I handed over her bra.

“It was a valid question,” she said to me. “A fast pitch ball is only eleven inches around. A mush ball is sixteen.”

Once she fastened the hooks on her bra, I pulled her shirt over her head. The fuzz covering her scalp was velvety soft against my palm.

M
y mother was always cold, so I was hot and sweating in the car on the way home, wishing I'd taken my coat off. It felt like I'd spent all afternoon at the doctor's office, and next Monday we'd be back there to get her results, to find out if the chemo had worked. My mother clutched the appointment card in her hand and stared out the window. The cancer may or may not have receded, but either way she looked tired and pale. Her illness was all around us in that stuffy car.

So I was surprised when, as we pulled into her driveway, she turned to me and said, “I think I could drive if I had an automatic.”

Sitting there in my jeep with its automatic transmission, we both looked at her Malibu parked right next to us in the driveway. I knew her next words before they came.

“We could trade cars,” she offered. “Just until I feel better.”

Her Malibu was certainly more fun to drive than my jeep, and from the tone of her voice I could tell she thought she was doing me a favor. But she was wrong. For me, her Malibu was a painful
reminder of the happy family that Queeg, my mom, and I had once been, but were no longer. I took a second before I replied, to measure that pain against my desperate need to gain some distance from my mother.

Finally I said, “Okay.”

She took her keys out of her purse, pried one off the ring, and handed it to me. “I still need your help at a shoot Friday morning.”

“No problem.”

The windshield wipers moved back and forth bringing her house into and out of focus. I remember wishing she would just hurry up. It felt like we'd spent a lifetime sitting in that hot stuffy car.

“It's a funeral.”

I sighed, annoyed. It was just like her to not tell me that little detail until after I'd agreed to help. My mother had recently come up with some harebrained idea that funeral photography was some new unexploited market she could take advantage of. I laughed the first time she mentioned it, but amazingly a few people actually answered the advertisements she'd placed in the paper. So far I'd been lucky enough to avoid assisting her on those jobs, but now it seemed that my luck had run out.

She wrote down the address for the funeral home and handed it to me. “Don't be late,” she said.

“You know me.”

“Yes, I do.” She frowned a warning. In the past year, since she'd stopped drinking, my mother had for the most part gotten her shit together. My shit, on the other hand, was still all over the place.

I asked if she needed anything out of the Malibu and she told me
no
, that her tripod and lights were in it, but since I would be meeting her at the funeral home anyway, that wouldn't be a problem.

She glanced back at all the packages piled in the back of the jeep. “You want some help moving all this stuff?” she asked.

The rain beat steadily on the roof. I took the Malibu's key from her and then turned off the jeep and laid its key in her open palm.

“I don't need any of it this week. Let's wait and swap everything out Friday after the funeral.”

“You sure?”

“Sure I'm sure. Everything will be fine,” I said.